Elder Merrill's Current Address

Sunday, September 16, 2012

September 10th

We had a good week this week. Next week will be good too.
Today Elder Ardern and his wife start their mission tour.
They are touring our mission for a week and are going to work with,
study with, and teach with missionaries. Elder Ardern is in the
Philippines area presidency and spoke last October conference.
(He is British and talked about A Time to Prepare.) We are also
going to have a conference where he is going to speak it will be fun.

We have this one less active that really doesn't want to be
taught. What she does though isn't so bad. Every time we go over
there she grabs the nearest neighbour and says here teach this person
instead. Every time we go there we meet new investigators
and many of them have been pretty receptive to us. Our less active is
excited as well to come to those lessons and bear testimony so it's
pretty good lessons. We do need to find our less active's concern
though and help her come back to church. She does
seem pretty willing to come back. We had another less active family
that came to church for the first time yesterday. We were very excited.
This family was really active before and just gradually fell away.
Like many do they said it was just really hard
to come back, especially the first day back. But when they came in I
know they felt welcome because this amazing ward just fellowshipped them
immediately. There were so many members there to help them feel
comfortable is was so good. It's hard for a missionary
when the people they help get to church aren't received well.

We have one family that has a little girl named Darling age
11. This family is less active and doesn't come to church, but Darling
hasn't been baptised yet. Well we didn't think our teaching was having
any effect over there, but it does. At least
a little. Yesterday Darling showed up to church with one of her
friends (neighbour who is not a member.) So although no one else is
coming, we have the youngest member of the family. Maybe she can be the
gateway to help her whole family return to church.
It's really cool sometimes to see the spiritual strength of kids.
It's sad to see them need that strength, but it is cool to see it. I
should also mention that the family that came for a baby blessing last
week came again. We were excited. They said that
it is easier to come the second time to church. We also had another
less active sing a special musical number. (Guess who was asked to
accompany her about a minute before she sang.) But we were pleased to
see that she had excepted that small assignment

I went on exchanges with the District leader this week.
It was really fun, but there was about a foot of water. As we were
wading through the water for a while a rock fell into my shoe. I
thought I could wait but then I decided to take it
out right then. I stopped and took off my shoe and went to dump out my
rock, but to my surprise... I discovered a frog. There was a frog in
my shoe. Now I don't think that has ever happened to any of you. If it
has, good for you.